Aesop's Fables Online Collection

Heather - our narrator

The Aesop's Fables Online Collection appears to be an amateur project by one man and his daughter to digitize the text of Aesop's fables, index and cross reference them, organize by moral, and provide Real Audio of the daughter reading the text. This site is especially interesting because it is an amateur production and it is interesting to see what lengths people will go to just to put information out there without financial or institutional benefits.

Collection Principles

The site author does not specifically address how he chooses which fables to post. However, he does repeatedly boast about the large number of fables available and promises that more are coming - he claims to update the site daily. It seems that quantity is the key issue here. Aesop's fables are not the only stories represented. He explicitly mentions taking fables from a published work and putting them on the web. He does not mention anything about copyright and I think that fair use might be difficult to argue here as I think more weight might be given to a more scholarly effort. However, given the age of much of the material, it is likely that most if not all items and stories are in the public domain. It would be interesting to know if he considered copyright at all in creating this site.

Object Characteristics

The site consists of different short fables, each given their own page. Most fables are text only - no graphics or audio. Some fables have Real Audio available where the site author's daughter, Heather, reads the story aloud. The audio isn't very good quality. Heather sounds like she is reading in a tunnel. Also, it is honestly a bit creepy. The site author includes a photo of his daughter on the site so we can know what our young narrator looks like. If you click on the picture Heather tells you her hometown, first and last name, date of birth, what school she attends, and the name of her teacher. Personally, I think this is a ridiculous amount of information for a child to have on the internet and her father is just asking for trouble.



Metadata

Besides the section where he mentions the books that some of the stories were taken from, there isn't much metadata. He does however include links to lesson plans using the stories. So he doesn't provide information about how the objects came to be, but about where they should go and how they can be used.

Audience

Besides the author and his family, the intended audience is clearly families and teachers. The site author refers to his collection as "the truest family fun on the Internet." The veracity of that statement aside, the author is truly focused on and dedicated to creating a family friendly collection of morals and stories for people to enjoy together. The inclusion of lesson plans shows that he is also interested in educators using this resource in the classroom.